One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Friday, June 15, 2012

From the Archive: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

As I’ve mentioned before,
I often receive e-mails asking me to review specific films. One of the most
oft-requested reviews is for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989),
which is widely-regarded as the worst Star Trek film to
feature the original cast.

I don't know this for certain, but I strongly suspect this particular review is
requested in the hope that somehow, in some way, this poorly-reviewed William
Shatner film might be rehabilitated in popular imagination. For instance,
requests for a review of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier spiked
after my positive review of The Motion Picture. My supposition thus leads me to believe that a lot of Star
Trek fans must -- secretly? -- enjoy the oft-derided fifth film, and are seeking valid,
well-enunciated arguments in support of it.

I can relate to that. Big time.

After all, I am a Star Trek fan, and can see
the silver-lining in every Star Trek movie.
So I am happy to enumerate the aspects I appreciate and admire about Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier.

However,for the record, it is also necessary for me
to note where and when things go dramatically wrong with the movie. So -- to
quote Joss Whedon -- this review isn't going to be all "hugs and
puppies."

That fact established there are indeed many components of Star Trek
V: The Final Frontier worth lauding and I will explain in detail
below why I feel that way.

Let's start, however, with a brief re-cap of the plot. The fifth Star
Trek picks up with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew on
vacation on Earth -- in theparadise-like setting of Yosemite --
when a dangerous hostage situation unfolds in the Neutral Zone. There, on
Nimbus III -- on the "planet of Galactic Peace" -- a Vulcan
renegade named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) has taken hostage the Romulan,
Klingon and Federation counsels. He has done so with an army of devout
"believers." Sybok's gambit is to capture a starship so he can set a
course for the center of the Galaxy and find the mythical planet Sha Ka
Ree (named after Sean Connery), where he believes "God"
awaits.

An unprepared U.S.S. Enterprise, with only a skeleton crew aboard, is
assigned to rescue the hostages. The attempt fails, and Sybok commandeers the Enterprise using
his particular brand of Vulcan brainwashing to persuade the crew to follow him.
In particular, he frees each man he encounters of his "secret pain."
Kirk soon learns that Sybok is Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) half-brother, a heretic who
rejected Vulcan dogma and came to believe that emotion, not logic, is the key
to enlightenment.

With a Klingon bird of prey in hot pursuit, the Enterprise passes
through the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy and encounters a
mysterious planet. There, on the surface, awaits a creature who claims to be
"God." Kirk questions the Being, and soon a vision of Heaven goes to
Hell.

Because It's There: The Search for the Ultimate Knowledge; The
Search for a Film's Noble Intentions

From Captain Kirk's effort to climb El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in
the film's first scene to Sybok's probe through the foreboding and mysterious Great Barrier, Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier concerns, in large part, a typically-Star
Trek conceit: the human quest to reach a higher summit and to find
at that apex a new or deeper truth about our existence.

When Mr. Spock asks Kirk why he would involve himself in an endeavor as
dangerous as climbing a mountain, Kirk answers simply, "because it's
there." That's a simplistic but apt shorthand to describe one of our basic
human drives. What our eyes detect, we want to explore, to experience.
Enlightenment, for us, is often attained on the next plateau.

Sybok terms his search for "God" the search for the "ultimate
knowledge" and he too seeks to climb a mountain after a fashion: penetrating
the Great Barrier which protects a secret at the center of our galaxy. The
means by which Sybok conducts his quest are not entirely kosher, however
(kidnapping diplomats and hijacking a starship). But his quest, though coupled
with his vanity, is sincere. An outcast among his Vulcan brethren, Sybok
believes that if he can "locate" God, his beliefs will be validated, and thus perhaps re-examined by those who made him a pariah.

At one point late in the film, Kirk seems to suddenly realize that Sybok and he share a
similar drive; that he has stubbornly refused Sybok the same liberty he affords
himself, not merely to "go climb a rock," but to see, literally,
what awaits at the mountain-top. Upon this realization, Kirk gazes knowingly at
an old-fashioned captains' wheel in the Enterprise's observation
deck. His hand brushes across a bronze plaque engraved with the legend "Where
No Man Has Gone Before," a re-iteration of the franchise's
"bold," trademark phrase. In a world where so many sci-fi movies depend on black-and-white portrayals of "good" and "evil," it's quite bold that The Final Frontier actually establishes a connection --- and one involving the meaning of life itself -- between protagonist and antagonist.

It should be noted here, perhaps, that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is not out on some wacky limb, franchise-wise, in exploring the existence of "God," or a planet
from which life sprang. On the former front, the Enterprise encountered
the Greek God Apollo in the second-season episode "Who Mourns for
Adonis" and on the latter front, discovered the planet "Eden" in
the third season adventure "The Way to Eden." In a very real way, The Final Frontier feels like a development of this oft-seen Trek theme, as much as The Motion Picture was a development of themes featured in episodes such as "The Changeling" and "The Doomsday Machine."

What remains laudable
aboutStar Trek V: The Final Frontier, however, is that
screenwriter David Loughery, with director Shatner and producer Harve Bennett,
carry their central metaphor -- discovery
of the ultimate knowledge -- to the hearts of the beloved franchise characters. Star
Trek V very much concerns not just the external quest for the
divine, but a personal and human desire to understand the
meaning of life.

Or, at the very least, the
path to understanding the meaning of life.

What that desire comes down to here is one lengthy scene set in the Enterprise observation deck. There are no phasers,
transporters, starships, Klingons, or special effects to be found. Instead, the
scene involves Kirk, Spock, Bones and Sybok grappling with their personal
beliefs, with their sense of personal identity and history, even. Sybok
attempts to convert Spock and McCoy to his agenda by using his hypnotic powers
of the mind. "Each man hides a secret pain. Share yours with me and
gain strength from the sharing," he offers. One at a time, Kirk's
allies crumble under the mesmeric influence. Then Sybok comes to Kirk, and the good captain steadfastly refuses
Sybok's brand of personal enlightenment.

In refusing to share his
pain, Kirk notes to Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) that "you know
that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're
the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose
them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

This specific
back-and-forth is the heart of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The
Kirk/Sybok confrontation embodies the difference between Catholic Guilt (as
represented by Kirk), and New Age "release" (as
represented by Sybok). In terms of a short explanation, Catholic guilt is
essentially a melancholy or world-weariness brought about by an
examined life. It's the constant questioning and re-parsing of decisions
and history (some call it Scrupulosity). And if you know Star
Trek, you understand that this sense of melancholy is, for lack of a
better word, very Kirk-ian.

As a starship captain,
James Kirk has sent men and women to their deaths and made tough calls that changed the direction of the galaxy, literally. But he
has never been one to do so blindly, or without consideration of the
consequences. "My God, Bones, what have I done?" He asks after
destroying the Enterprise in The Search for Spock,
and that's just one, quick example of his reflective nature. In short, Kirk belabors his
decisions, so much so that McCoy once had to tell him (in "Balance of
Terror") not to obsess; not to "destroy the one called
Kirk."

What Captain Kirk
believes - and what is crucial to his success as a starship captain --
is that he must carry and remember the guilt associated with his tough decisions.
He must re-hash those choices and constantly relive them, or else, during the next
crisis, he will fail. His decisions are part of him; he is the
cumulative result of those choices, and to lose them would be -- in his very
words here -- "to lose himself." Pain, anguish, regret...these are all crucial elements of Kirk's being, and of the human equation.

By contrast, Sybok
promises an escape from melancholy. His abilities permit him to
"erase" the presence of pain all-together. This a kind of
touchy-feely, New Age balm in which a person lets go of pain (via, for example,
ACT: Active Release Technique) and then, once freed, suddenly sees the light.

Sybok's approach arises
from the counter-culture movement of the 1960s (the era of the Original
Series), and might be described -- albeit in glib fashion -- as "Do
what feels right" (a turn-of-phrase Spock himself uses in the
2009 Star Trek). But Sybok is a master of semantics. He
doesn't "control minds," he says, he "frees"
them. Left unexamined by Sybok is Kirk's interrogative: once freed from pain,
what does a person have left? What remains when a person's core is removed? An empty vessel?

Isn't pain,
borne by experience a part of our core psychological make-up? The New
Age depiction of Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier led
critic David Denby to term this entry "the most Californian"
of the Star Trek films (New York, June
19,1989, page 68).

In countenancing the
false god of Sha Ka Ree, these belief systems collide. Sybok -- freed of pain
and self-reflection -- is unaware of his own tragic flaws. Eventually he sees
them, terming them "arrogance" and "vanity." But
Kirk, who has always carried his choices with him, is able to face the
malevolent alien with a sense of composure and entirely appropriate suspicion.
Kirk is able, essentially, to ask "the Almighty for his I.D." because
he has maintained his Catholic sense of guilt. He's been
around the block too many times to be cowed by an alien who wants to appropriate his ship.

The lengthy scene in the
observation deck, during which Sybok attempts to shatter the powerful
triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is probably the best in the film. Shatner
shoots it well too, with Sybok intersecting the perimeters of this famous
character "triangle" (of id, ego, and super-ego) and then, visually,
scattering its points to the corners of the room when doubt is sewn.

And then, after Kirk's
powerful argument and re-assertion of Catholic Guilt, the triangle (depicted
visually, with the three characters as "points") is re-constructed. Sybok is both literally and symbolically forced out of their
unified "space."

In point of fact,
Shatner uses this triangular, three-person blocking pattern a lot in the film. Variety did
not like the movie, but noted the power of this particular sequence in its original review: "Shatner,
rises to the occasion," the magazine wrote, "in directing
a dramatic sequence of the mystical Luckinbill teaching Nimoy and DeForest
Kelley to re-experience their long-buried traumas. The re-creations of Spock's
rejection by his father after his birth and Kelley's euthanasia of his own
father are moving highlights."

While discussing
Shatner, I should also add -- no doubt controversially -- that
Shatner boasts a fine eye for visual composition. The opening scene on the
cracked, arid plain of Nimbus III, and the follow-up scene set at Yosemite
reveal that he has an eye not just for capturing natural beauty, but for
utilizing the full breadth of the frame. As a director, Shatner came out of
television (helming episodes of T.J. Hooker), but his visual
approach doesn't suggest a TV mentality. On the contrary, I would argue that
there are moments in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that
are the most inherently cinematic of the film series, after Wise's Star
Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Abrams' big-budget reboot of
2009.

What Does God Need With
a Starship? Pinpointing the
Divine inside The Human Heart and in the Natural World

I've noted above how Star Trek V: The
Final Frontier involves the search for the ultimate knowledge, and
uses two distinctive viewpoints (Catholic Guilt embodied by Kirk and New Age
philosophy embodied by Sybok) to get at that knowledge.

What's important, after
that "quest" is the film's conclusion about the
specific "ultimate knowledge" gleaned from the journey.

In short order, in Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier, the angry Old Testament-styled God-Alien
reveals his true colors and demonstrates a capricious, violent-side. After Kirk
asks "what does God need with a starship," "God"
is wrathful and violent. And this is what the site Common
Sense Atheism suggested was really being asked by our secular,
humanist hero.

"One might ask,
"What does God need with animal sacrifice? With a human sacrifice? With
a catastrophic flood? With billions of galaxies and trillions of stars and
millions of unstoppably destructive black holes? What does God need with
congenital diseases and a planet made of shifting plates that cause earthquakes
and tsunamis? Isn't the whole point of omnipotence that God could make a good
world without all these needlessly silly or harmful phenomena?"

Moreover, why should
humans obey the commands of someone as capricious, jealous, petty, and violent
as the God of the Jewish scriptures?

This critical line of
thought reminds me of my experience seeing Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier in the theaterwith my girlfriend at
the time, a devout Jew.

Afterwards, she was
utterly convinced that Kirk and company had indeed encountered the Biblical,
Old Testament God. And that they had, in fact, destroyed Him. Her
reasoning for this belief was that "God" as depicted in the film actually looked and acted in the very fashion of the
Old-Testament God.

On the former, front
(God's appearance), The Journal of Religion and Film, in a piece "Any Gods Out There?" by
John S. Schultes, opined: "This being appears in the stereotypical
Westernized figure of the "Father God" as depicted in art. He has a
giant head, disembodied, depicting an older man with a kind face, flowing white
hair and booming voice."

On the latter front -- behavior -- there are also important commonalities. The Old Testament God was
cruel, self-righteous, unjust, demanding, and acting according to a
closely-held personal agenda (moving in a mysterious way?) without
thought of courtesy or explanation to humans. Consider that the Old Testament
God destroyed whole cities (like those of Sodom and Gomorrah),
and that it's his plan to kill us by the billion-fold in the
End Times, if we don't believe in him. The Old Testament God is indeed one of
violence and punishment.

And this is precisely
how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier depicts this
creature. He wants to deliver his power -- his violence and judgment -- to
"every corner of creation." Naturally, Kirk can't allow
this brand of subjugation...even it comes from God.

Over the years, I have
come to agree more and more with my former-girlfriend's assessment. The alien portrayed in Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier may indeed be the Old Testament God of our
legends. Just as Apollo was indeed, Apollo of Greek Myth in "Who Mourns
for Adonis."

The ultimate knowledge,
according to this Trek movie is that God only exists "right
here; the human heart," as Kirk notes near the film's conclusion.
Accordingly, The Journal of Religion and Societyexplains that this conclusion represents a narrative wrinkle
true to "the collective history of Classic Star
Trek," a re-assertion of Roddenberry-esque, secular
principles. In his essay, "From Captain Stormfield to Captain Kirk, Two
20th Century Representations of Heaven, scholar Michel Clasquin concludes:

"In "Final
Frontier", Heaven turns out to be Hell: the optimism is deferred
until the heroes have returned to the man-made heaven of the United Federation
of Planets. The film ends where it began: with Spock, Kirk and McCoy on
furlough in a thoroughly tamed Earth wilderness. This, the film tells us, is
the true Heaven, the secular New Jerusalem that humans, Vulcans and a
smattering of other species will build for themselves in the 24th century, a
world in which the outward heavenly conditions reflect the true Heaven that
resides in the human heart."

Clasquin's point here absolutely demands a re-evaluation of the book-end Yosemite camping scenes of Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier. Many critics complained that the film
takes a long time to get started, since the crew must "laboriously"
be re-gathered from vacation.

However, if Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier's point is that "God" resides
in man's heart (and is, in fact, man himself) and that the Garden of Eden, or
Heaven itself is "a tamed Earth wilderness," -- a
finely-developed sense of responsible environmentalism, in fact --
then these two sequences of "nature" prove absolutely necessary in
terms of the narrative. Heaven on Earth is within our grasp, the movie seems to
note. We don't have to die to get there. We merely must act responsibly as
stewards of our planet (or in Star Trek's universe, planets,
plural). The human heart, and the Beautiful Earth: these are Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier's (atheist) optimistic views of where,
ultimately, Divinity resides. If you desire a Star Trek movie with some pretty deep philosophical underpinnings, look no further than William Shatner's The Final Frontier.

"All I Can Say is, They
Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To: A Movie Shattered (not Shatnered...) by Poor
Execution"

William Shatner handles
many of the visual aspects of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with
flair and distinction. His impressive efforts are badly undercut, however, by three catastrophic
weaknesses. The first such weakness involves studio interference in the very story he
wanted to tell. The second involves inferior special effects, and the third
involves slipshod editing.

On the first front, William Shatner sought initially to make a serious, even
bloody movie concerning fanatical religious cults and God imagery. His plan was
shit-canned in large part, by Paramount Studios. Star Trek IV: The
Voyage Home (1986) had just proven a major success, and the Powers
That Be judged this was so because the movie evidenced a terrific sense of
humor, particularly fish-out-of-water humor. The edict came
down that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had to
include the same level of humor.

Frankly, this edict was the kiss of death. The humor in Star Trek IV: The
Voyage Home grew organically out of the situation: advanced people
of the 23rd century being forced to deal with people and activities of the
"primitive" year 1986. The scenario there called for fish-out-of-water humor, and no characters were sacrificed on the altar of laughs.

Above, I described the thematic principles of Star Trek V: seeking
the ultimate summit both externally and internally, and discovering that
the Divine is inside us -- or is, actually, the Human Heart. Sohow exactly, does Scotty knocking
himself out on a ceiling beam, or Uhura performing a fan dance, or Chekov rehashing
his "wessel" shtick fit that conceit?

The short answer is that it doesn't. Such humor had to be grafted on here, and
it shows. It's forced, awkward, and entirely unnecessary. The inclusion of so
much humor actually runs counter to the grandeur and seriousness of the story
Shatner hoped to tell.

And then -- in a typical bout of bean-counter nonsense -- what does Paramount
do next? Well, it advertises and markets Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier with the ad-line "why are they putting seat
belts in theaters this summer?" suggesting that the movie is an
action-packed roller-coaster ride! This is after they demanded
the movie be a comedy! Talk about assuring audience dissatisfaction. Tell
audiences that the movie they are about to see is super-exciting and action-packed,
and then give them Vulcan nerve-pinches on horses, Uhura and Scotty flirting
with each other, and crewmen singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." Quite simply, The Final Frontier's marketing campaign didn't do a good job of managing audience expectations.

The second aspect of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that
damages it so egregiously involves the special visual effects. A movie like
this -- about the search for God, no less -- must feature
absolutely inspiring and immaculate, awesome visuals. We must believe in
the universe that includes Sha Ka Ree, and the God Creature.

Originally, Shatner
envisioned Sha Ka Ree turning into a kind of Bosch-ean Hell, featuring demons and
rivers of fire. But what we get instead is a glowing Santa Claus-head in a beam
of light, and...a much too familiar desert planet.

What's worse is that
many visuals don't match-up. When Kirk's shuttle flies over the God
planet initially, the surface of the world looks like a microscopic landscape
(a sort of God's Eye view of the head-of-a-pin, as it were). But when the
shuttle lands the planet just looks like a terrestrial desert. This is Heaven?

Perhaps Star Trek V could have surmounted this problem,
since the TV series was never about special effects anyway, but about ideas.
But the special effects in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier fail
to even adequately render believable and "real" such commonplace Star
Trek things as starships in motion or photon torpedo blasts.
Watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a little
bit like watching Golan and Globus's Superman IV: The Quest for
Peace (1986): the cheapness of the effects make you wince, and
stands in stark contrast to a franchise's glory days.

And the editing! Oh my, to
quote Mr. Sulu.

Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier is edited -- in
polite terms -- in disastrous fashion. During Kirk, Spock and McCoy's
escape on rocket boots through an Enterprise turbo shaft, the
same deck numbers repeat, in plain view.

When Kirk falls from his
perch high on El Capitan the movie cuts to a lengthy shot of Shatner -- in
front of a phony rear-projection background -- flapping his arms.

And just take a look at
how Kirk's weight, make-up, hair-cut, and disposition shift back-and-forth in
his final scene with General Koord and General Klaa aboard the Klingon Bird of
Prey. This mismatch was due to post-production re-shoots when the original
ending was deemed unacceptable.

Forget the script (which might have worked without the studio-demanded humor).
Forget the acting (which is pure Star Trek ham bone --
and, in my estimation, perfect for a futuristic passion play), it's the editing that scuttles this film.
Whether it's allowing us the time to notice that Sybok's haircut and outfit
change on Sha Ka Ree, or permitting us to linger too long on visible wires in
two fight scenes, Star Trek V's cutting is just not up
to par.

There's a Star Trek fan out there on the Net who has
taken it upon himself to re-edit Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and
you know something? It's a worthy enterprise. Preferably,
Shatner should do a director's cut, and trim his misbegotten film down to a
mean, lean eighty-five minutes. The worst editing, effects, and jokey moments
would be excised, and audiences would be surprised, perhaps, how visually
adroit, how dynamic, how meaningful and even spiritual this Final
Frontier could be sans the theatrical release's considerable
problems.

Let's face it, modern criticism often thrives on hyperbole, so it's fun and
dramatic to declare that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is
one of the ten worst science fiction films EVER! The only
problem is, it's not necessarily true.

I don't even know that The Final Frontier is actually the worst Star Trek film, to be blunt, especially after watching Generations and Nemesis recently. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier conforms
to Muir's Snowball Rule of Movie Viewing. Allow me to explain.
Because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is perceived by
the majority of critics and Star Trek fans as
"bad," everything about the film gets criticized,
when -- in point of fact -- many other Star Trek movies
feature many of the same goofy errors. For instance, I have read some Star
Trek fans complain vociferously about the fact that the Enterprise travels
to the center of the galaxy here in a matter of hours.

The fact that in First
Contact, the Enterprise gets from the Romulan
Neutral Zone to Earth in time to join a battle against the Borg, already
in progress, goes unnoticed or at least uncommented upon. So, the starship
got there in like, you know, a few minutes, I guess. But because First
Contact is beloved and generally evaluated as good, it generally doesn't
garner the same level of negative attention or scrutiny. When it fails in a
spot here or there, it gets a pass.

Whereas, by contrast, the details in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier definitely
draw heavier scrutiny. The "bad movie" snowball, once rolling down a
hill, just grows larger and larger. We forgive less and less. Every aspect of the film is nitpicked and called into question, deservedly or not. It becomes harder, then, to register and recognize the good.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is an ambitious failure. But ambitious may
be the operative word here. The movie certainly aimed high, and hoped to chart
some fascinating spiritual and philosophical ground that feels abundantly true to the Star
Trek line and heritage.

But plainly, the
execution leaves a lot to be desired. Again, I renew my call for a Shatner-guided 85 minute version. One closer to his original vision, with improved special effects, and better editing. A new official release, re-modulated as I suggest, may be the only way for opinion-hardened Star Trek fans to see the good points of this admittedly problematic entry in the film canon.

8 comments:

I read this review when you first posted it and I think it makes even more sense to me the second time. I have this weird psychological quirk where I tend to watch flawed movies more frequently than well executed movies. The writer in me wants so much to fix it. I've watched Final Frontier more than any other Star Trek movie for that very reason. It's a shame that CGI was in its infancy when this was made because it could've looked so much better with today's technology. CGI couldn't fix the writing, however, and that had more to do with all the notes from the studio and even the actors than it did with the abilities of the writers. If I had been Shatner, I would've stopped at some point and said, "Look, if you don't want to do my story, let's do something completely different." I admire his tenacity, but at some point, you have to know you won't get the movie you want. The fact that Final Frontier was such a lost opportunity makes me watch it over and over, like one of these times it'll turn into the movie I want it to be.

You know, I think we may share that "psychological quirk" in common. I love to go back and dissect and analyze flawed movies...ones that ALMOST work. Star Trek V is certainly one of those for me. I admit, I watch it more often than The Voyage Home, which bores me...perhaps because its strengths remain so apparent. I'd much rather grapple with Star Trek V and search for the good underneath the bad.

I understand what you mean about Shatner. He knew this was one his one shot making a Star Trek movie, and I'm sure he felt boxed in. The studio wanted more humor, the actors wanted changes, etc. But I'm thrilled that his location shooting and environmental message made it to the final cut. I'd love to see a Shatner director's cut...

John, I love this review because you leave no stone unturned examining every aspect of Director Shatner’s film. I have defended it for over two decades, you are right about the visuals scenes that stand Star Trek V:TFF, Star Trek:The Motion Picture and the reboot Star Trek 2009 film apart from all the rest. Along with Star Trek:The Motion Picture, Star Trek II:Wrath Of Khan and Star Trek VI:Undiscovered Country, for me personally, Star Trek V:TFF is also one of my favorite Star Trek films ever since I saw it with friends the Summer of 1989. I was won over by the production design of the new look of the interior of the 1701-A sets, especially the hangar deck shuttle bay set with two full-scale Shuttlecraft mock-ups. Awesome scene that I will never get tired of watching is when Kirk, Spock , McCoy & company take that early flight in the Shuttlecraft from Earth’s Yosemite to the Enterprise 1701-A hangar deck[impressive set: imagine having this set on a weekly tv series] and are greeted by Scotty. Kirk, Spock & McCoy immediately take the hangar deck turbolift directly to the [new] bridge. This journey from the shuttlecraft arrival on the hangar deck to the bridge all makes the viewer feel the immensity of this majestic starship. I also liked the new intense-looking Type-2 Assault Phasers that were introduced in STV:TFF and used also in STVI:TUC.

It makes me so happy to see that there are other Star Trek fans who also can see the good in the 1989 fifth installment. I can watch the movie any time and get a kick out of it. I agree with you about the production design, and the impressive feat of building a hanger deck for the first time in Trek history. Excellent thoughts on this maligned and widely disliked film.

Great, great review, John. It's funny, I think my love for so much that this film had to offer made me overlook its faults, rather than vice versa - namely, in those production shortfalls. (Mind you, I grew up on Seventies Doctor Who and its ilk, so that method of consuming media is pretty much ingrained in my very soul!) But you draw out the film's strengths in terms of theme and storytelling beautifully, and it is for these and the underlying philosophies, so well narrated through the familiar trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy - who are all at their best here, to my mind, in terms of both characterisation and performance - that "The Final Frontier" endures for me as a firm favourite.

I love your observation about Seventies Doctor Who teaching you how to look past production shortfalls towards the essence of a production. That's a great quality, and one I wholeheartedly agree with. It also applies, very much to Blake's 7 or Land of the Lost. You kind of have to loo at all those programs with a specially focused "vision" to be able to enjoy some wonderful narratives. In some sense, the same is true of The Final Frontier, I agree. I love the characterizations in the film, and I agree with you that the film has something very special to say about the triangle of Kirk-Spock-McCoy.

Thanks for the series of Star Trek reviews from the Archive. It got me to revisit the movies also, after revisiting the TV series in these past years.

Unfortunately the gap in time and space is so wide now (almost 30 years) that it is difficult to watch the movies and imagine what they must have felt like when they first arrived.

Star Trek: The Sloooow-Motion Picture was one of those. Judging by your review, Star Trek: The Final Frontier is no different. I look forward to Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, universally praised as the best Star Trek movie ever. For some reason I remember Star Trek 3, 4 and 6 far better, which means I must have liked them more, I guess.

I'm glad you've been enjoying my "From the Archives" look at the Star Trek films. I've reviewed now almost all the Trek films save for IV, Insurrection and Nemesis. I'll get to those at some point, but I think next week I'm going to move on to new frontiers...

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

What the Critics Say...

"...some of the best writing about the genre has been done by John Kenneth Muir. I am particularly grateful to him for the time and attention he's paid to things others have overlooked, under-appreciated and often written off. His is a fan's perspective first, but with a critic's eye to theme and underscore, to influence and pastiche..." - Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, in the foreword to Horror Films FAQ (October 2013).

"Hands down, John Kenneth Muir is one of the finest critics and writers working today. His deep analysis of contemporary American culture is always illuminating and insightful. John's film writing and criticism is outstanding and a great place to start for any budding writer, but one should also examine his work on comic books, TV, and music. His weighty catalog of books and essays combined with his significant blog production places him at the top of pop culture writers. Johns work is essential in understanding the centrality of culture in modern society." - Professor Bob Batchelor, cultural historian and Executive Director of the James Pedas Communication Center at Thiel College (2014).

"...an independent film scholar, [Muir] explains film studies concepts in a language that is reader-friendly and engaging..." (The Hindu, 2007)"...Muir's genius lies in his giving context to the films..." (Choice, 2007)